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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
He left a trail of blood and rotten, void ichor in his wake. He couldn’t help it. His compass brought him here to where he was closest to, and several concerned government peons helped him to the fountain almost immediately after he appeared.
Noah groaned as he scooped handfuls of the fountain water into his mouth. He wanted to dive right into it and let the healing waters clean away the evidence of the void infested jungle, but worried eyes and whispers kept him to just leaning as much in as he could and taking in the healing properties.
As he started to come to his senses as the magic did its work, Noah couldn’t blame them. He was absolutely disgusting with blood and guts and black and violet who knows what covering his body.
Flora is almost right behind Noah. Having compassed over a few moments after he did, she gained a bit of ground on him owing to the comparative severity of his injuries versus hers. Stripping off her shirt and shorts—this was Torchline after all, and modesty was an afterthought at best, especially during Longheat—the queen plunged right into the fountain. "We all do it—the water purifies, so anything left in here will just...disappear." She adds with a shrug of her shoulders as she wades toward the center where the water was slightly deeper.
Sinking down until the water covered her shoulders, the Doubletake sighed with relief. It felt like the first real breath she'd taken since they entered the jungle, and now that she was out and home, everything felt a good deal easier.
"How're you feeling? That thing got you pretty good."
His eyes flicked up at the sound of her voice, but he didn't move at first. He lifted his head some, water dripping off of his fingers as he watched her climb in. While he knew the general demeanor of the Doubletake, having met her a handful of times now, he didn't know how truly comfortable and unabashed she was. But Noah didn't mind, either. Climbing into the fountain was all he wanted to do and had only kept himself at bay to the direction of the more meek government workers.
But she was the queen, after all.
Lifting himself off his knees just enough to crawl over into the fountain, the demigod nearly flopped with as little grace as one could imagine the way his ragged body looked. Blood and dark, black ichor swirled around him as he sunk down against the wall. He leaned so the majority of his body was beneath the water, buoyancy keeping him just barely floating above the stone bottom.
"Better." Noah almost grumbled through half-gritted teeth. Glacier eyes closed as he let himself press into the healing. Skin and muscle, sinew and flesh folded and came back together. It didn't feel much different than the springs in the mountains of his home, except where the Halovian hotspring was warm and full of comfort these fountain waters were crisp and refreshing, though welcomed and appreciated in the same way.
After a few moments, the hunter let his head rest back against the cool stone of the fountain's sidewall and asked, "How did Talyson convince you to all of that?"
Glancing down at the way the skin-coloured bra she wore had been dyed a faded greyish purple thanks to the blood and ichor she'd been steeped in, Flora sighs to herself, mentally noting that she'd likely have to throw away everything she'd been wearing that day. Maybe for Torchline's next regional quest she could suggest to Hadama they invest in some sort of magical washing machine that magically repaired and cleaned.
"It really got you, huh?" She murmurs, swimming a touch closer to Noah, her blue-green eyes casually roving over his face and what parts of his body she could see. No doubt the Forsaken could take care of himself, especially with his wounds being tended to by the waters around him, but he'd not be the first to pass out in the healing fountain and risk drowning despite the magical properties.
"Oh, pffft." Grinning, the queen tilts her head back until the water reaches her forehead. Straightening and smoothing her blonde hair back, Flora gives her head a little shake. "As if I care about whatever weird little plant thing he was after." The queen rolls her eyes playfully. "I always get him to help me with my quests, so when I heard he wanted to try and cleanse the area right next to Torchline, I figured that if I helped it'd make him owe me one next time I need a favour."
Noah sat unmoving in the fountain’s cool, silvery water--except for his arm. He lifted his right hand to his left forearm, and his fingers traced the jagged line running from his elbow to his hand, the memory of that old wound sharper here, surrounded by waters said to heal. Though it had been Safrin that had healed it, the scar still remained. The ache softened slightly, though the memories remained vivid as ever. "I've had worse," he said, "but it was close." He could still feel the void guardian's tendrils inside of him, ripping at his muscles and skin and trying to bring him to an end.
He lifted his head to look at the Queen then, feeling the water’s soothing touch against each new scar that rose as a whisper of the assault he had faced. He could feel the taste of his own blood in his mouth, even now. He swallowed it back. Her grin made own appear on his own face, a mirror to her's that wrinkled the corners of his eyes ever so slightly as normal color started to appear and blend back to his cheeks. "He definitely owes you. And me." He chuckled some, the rumbling of it in his throat helping the water's ease his mind along with his body.
"You have done a great deal for Torchline, speaking of." Noah said, the smile still on his face though the laughing glint in his eye turned to a more serious one. "Even in Halo we know about all the efforts down here."
No doubt beneath Noah's tattered clothes were a patchwork of scars—some fresh, some old—and though they were hidden, it was easy enough for Flora to imagine the way they silvered in jagged lines across the musculature of his demigod physique.
Laughing brightly at that, Flora's grin turns entirely girlish and playfully menacing as her sea-bright eyes roll. "I'll be sure to remind him of that as soon as I see him again." She mutters, noting the way colour was beginning to settle back into Noah's face making him look more like a man rather than some faded facsimile left in her fountain.
"Oh yeah?" Raising her eyebrows, flattery had ever been Flora's love language, and so it was with a flirtatious fanning of her eyelashes that she swam a touch closer. "Did you hear that at first they didn't want me as their queen? Thought I was too young for it and even went so far as to point out that I couldn't be as strong as I said I was because I'd let my twin die during the war." Now it was Flora's turn to have colour rise in her cheeks, and though she'd forgiven Harper (RIP) for the way things had gone down, there'd never be a moment when the mention of her twin didn't make her bristle in some way.
"I always mean to visit Halo, but it's so..." Wrinkling her nose, Flora's smirk turned crooked as her gaze meets Noah's. "..cold. It's hard to want to go somewhere that you need to bundle up when this is what you're used to." Gesturing around them, whether Flora means the heat or the fact that hardly any clothes were required (both, she means both), is up for the Forsaken to decide.
”People get caught up in the idea that age alone brings wisdom, especially if they are the ones with age. It is an unfortunate place to be, and an even more unfortunate standpoint to defend. I am sure there are a lot of people eating their own words now.” It was idiotic to turn a blind eye to the contributions that Flora had made (just as it was to turn from Hadama’s). ”In Halo, we used to go through Wardens like the changing of seasons.” Truly, it wasn’t until just before the second war that they had Wardens last more than a year — and there wasn’t always as many living there as there are now. ”We’ve had young leaders and old leaders and all sorts in between. All I can say is that the best of them were the ones that could listen to their people, lean into the values of the traditions around them while also bringing innovation that brought success.” That success was measured more recently. When the heralds were trapped beneath the barrier in the Hollowed Grounds, Halo was a place to be survived rather than a place where one could thrive. Perhaps that was why they went through leaders as fast as they did in his experience — dragons and frost giants and cannibals aside.
”I’m sorry you had to go through that. With your brother, and with Torchline using it against you.” Noah could remember when Hotaru told him of being pregnant and the pride and joy in her eyes, laced and mingled with the fear of losing her children just as she had before. The strength it took for the Valkyrie to bring new life into the world was one of the bravest things Noah had ever seen after the tragedy of losing the children she had in her previous world. ”I know, too, it takes a lot of strength to stand up in that kind of grief and decide you’re going to do the best you can with the life you’ve been given.” He would never forget Hotaru after Enzo’s death. He, like many others around her, helped her pick up the pieces of herself and become some semblance of whole once again. Noah wondered who did that for Flora — or if she had been unfortunate to have to do it all herself.
Noah too understood her point about Halo, and it made him chuckle again in kind. ”I think Halovians share that sentiment about Torchline’s heat.” The lack of clothes was one thing (Torchline was the first place Noah had seen a woman’s midriff that wasn’t already naked in his bed, after all), but the unbearable heat was a lot for those used to the frigid arctic to get used to. He didn’t know many people (though there were some) who could spend more than a day or so outside their own climate.
"It's a bunch of bullshit is what it is." Flora says succinctly, of age bringing wisdom—or anything other than wrinkles. It was precisely the sort of thinking that someone in their early twenties would have, but the Doubletake was convinced that she'd carry the same opinion well into old age as well. Experience brought wisdom, not just age, and already at 21 she'd done a helluva lot of living.
Flashing Noah a wolfish smile in response to his advice, one which quickly dissolves at the mention of her twin, the queen just nods. "I'm not sure I decided I was going to do the best I could," she says with an earnest shrug. "More so...I just decided I needed to do something." Though Flora had had family who tried to surround her after Enzo's death, she'd pushed them all away. Grief had hit her hard, and no part of her was interested in healing or moving on in the weeks and months which had followed the war, so she'd opted to alienate herself until she'd clawed off the healing scabs that tried to cover her heart so often that nothing but a mess of scar tissue remained. "And as much as I love Hadama, he was making Torchline waaaaaay too good." Smirking, the queen rolls her eyes and shrugs once more.
"Yeah well, they're obviously mistaken." She chuckles, and as if reading Noah's mind, Flora leans onto her back and spreads her arms and legs in order to float, bearing nearly the entirety of her youthful body for his eyes to roam over. Or not. Probably not, knowing what she did about the Forsaken's marriage and alliances, but on the off chance. A girl didn't have a body quite as curvaceous as Flora did and not want to show it off, after all.
With the healing waters of the fountain having done all their work, Noah was content to sit in the waters and talk with the queen for a moment. The quiet was nice in the wake of what they had just faced. Had she not also come to the fountain, he would have gotten himself healed to a state proper enough for travel and then use his compass to head immediately back to the Citadel, but he would stay and talk to the queen for as long as was given.
It was almost as much of a relief as the waters themselves, even if they weren’t close friends or anything.
It was better than getting his ass kicked by the jungle.
He let his head fall back again gently against the side of the fountain. His body shifted down then, too, half floating as he bopped just a few inches off the bottom of the fountain. He didn’t notice the way Flora moved to do much the same, though she floated closer to the surface, with her body on full display, because he was looking up at the passing clouds across the bright blue tropical sky. His throat rumbled with agreement at her statement of bullshit — because for as much reasoning and logic as Noah could put behind it, it was bullshit in the end. ”Something is better than nothing. Staying still is dying.” He said, then laughed at her next statement.
Hadama, much like Noah, had a lot of ideals and values when it came to being good. ”The surface is a much different game than the bottom of the ocean, I think.” His eyes wrinkled as he smiled again, still laughing. He understood where Hadama’s heart and mind were because his too reflected similarly, but he also understood the wild streak in Flora’s heart that matched the wilder, more dangerous aspects of Torchline. His brother Zeke had much the same spark.
Though the demigod had no idea of the goings on behind the scenes of the Hanged Man, so he really only thought it a wild spirit. ”You’ll have to keep him from being more boring than stone.”
Snorting under her breath, Flora glances over at the Forsaken. "I'm going to put that on a t-shirt for you." She mumbles playfully, instantly noting the way his glacier stare was fixed on Torchline's bright blue skies rather than her golden curves. Yes, he was married, but come on. Haven't you heard, Noah? What happens in Torchline stays in Torchline.
Usually.
Laughing at that, the queen shrugs as she leans forward; what was the point in floating half-naked if no one was looking. "I do my best. I think he's started to drink more since knowing me, and I even got him to dance at that Midwinter ball in the Grounds." Baby steps, but positive ones in the queen's mind.
Deciding that if Noah was just going to lounge, she'd leave him to it. "Hopefully someone keeps you from being more boring than stone, mm?" She purrs coyly as she rises out of the water, her underwear and bra clinging to her body which was now mostly free of injury and void-blood. Shooting the Forsaken a wink of her shoulder, the queen slides out of the fountain, gathering up her clothes before waggling her fingers in Noah's direction and heading home.
